As a founder member of Mystery Women in 1997, promoting Crime Fiction has always been my passion.
Following the closure of Mystery Women, a new group was formed on 30th January 2012 promoting crime fiction.
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Sunday, 30 March 2014

Ngaio Marsh was born and
educated in Christchurch, New Zealand.Ngaio is a Maori name that means 'clever' and
Ngaio Marsh was certainly well named.She was multi-talented and loved writing, acting and painting, but, when
she left school, chose to study painting and entered the Canterbury School of
Art in 1913.She left the art college in
1919 and planned to make her career as a painter while writing short stories,
articles and poetry.However she got
distracted by the opportunity to tour the North Island
with the Allan Wilkie Shakespeare Company (1919-20) and followed this by
touring with the Rosemary Rees Comedy Company.Throughout the 1920s
Marsh divided her life between the theatre, writing poetry and stories and
painting, exhibiting with 'The Group, seven Christchurch artists who made a great impact
with their work.In 1928 Marsh visited Britain for the first time as the guest of a
wealthy New Zealand family
who had maintained connections with Britain.From that first visit, Marsh loved Britain and, in
1929, she set up a small shop in Knightsbridge. In 1932 Marsh returned
to New Zealand
to look after her sick mother. In 1934 she wrote A Man Lay Dead,
featuring Detective Chief Inspector Roderick Alleyn, a detective at Scotland
Yard.This was the first of thirty-two
crime novels featuring Alleyn, who ended his career as Detective Chief
Superintendent.Most of the novels are
set in England but a few are
set in New Zealand
(Vintage Murder, Died in the Wool, Colour Scheme and Photo Finish.)In Surfeit of Lampreys the story
begins in New Zealand but
the main action takes place in London.Occasionally Marsh uses her travels in Europe as the background for her novels (When In Rome
and Spinsters In Jeopardy.)Ngaio Marsh is one of
the Golden Age 'Queens of Crime' and Roderick Alleyn is very much a Golden Age
detective hero: handsome, well-born (his brother is a baronet) and highly
intelligent, he is also unfailingly courteous to those of a lower class or less
wealthy than he is.His usual assistant
at Scotland Yard is Inspector Fox, a solid and reliable officer and they share
a mutual respect.In A Man Lay Dead
Alleyn meets Nigel Bathgate, a young reporter who, in later novels, likes to
describe himself as Alleyn's 'Watson.'In 1938 Marsh returned
to England from New Zealand after travelling through Europe, and it was on board ship that she wrote Artists
In Crime, her sixth book featuring Alleyn.The opening chapter is set on just such a ship and relates how Alleyn
first met Agatha Troy.Troy
is a famous artist and many people think Troy
is Marsh's alter ego.Alleyn falls in
love with Troy
and, although she refuses him in Artists In Crime, she does not stand
out against him for long and they marry at the end of Marsh's next book, Death
In a White Tie, also written in 1938.Troy and
Alleyn have one son and remain happily married for the rest of the series.Troy
appears in many of the subsequent books and sometimes, as in A Clutch of Constables Shrouds, has a very prominent role in the
story.During the Second World
War Marsh joined the Red Cross Transport Unit in New Zealand.After the War Marsh divided her place of
residence between Britain
and New Zealand,
just as she divided her time between writing, painting and the theatre.She formed a theatre company and directed
many productions.In 1967 the University of Canterbury named its theatre after her.

Throughout all her books
Marsh's passion for the theatre and for art is obvious and provides settings
and characters for many of her books.The theatre is especially prominent, as is her passion for
Shakespeare.Also evident is her
interest fascination with Maori customs and her corresponding interest in
traditional English customs.

Marsh started her crime
writing career with A Man Lay Dead, a classic 'country house murder,'
and this was a formula she kept returning to.Even some of her novels set in New Zealand, such as Died In the
Wool, have the same structure.Although Marsh says that Alleyn served in the First World War, his
experiences are glossed over and have left no physical or emotional scars.Marsh mentions the Second World War in her
novels(indeed the subplot
in Died In the Wool is that Alleyn is seconded to New Zealand to uncover
Nazi spies) but she does not allow the privations and change of attitudes that
followed the War to mar her picture of the England of country houses and
high-born eccentrics.

Marsh's last novel, Photo
Finish, was published in 1980.She
died in 1982.The honours awarded to her
included Dame of the British Empire, the Mystery Writers of America Grand
Master Award and New Zealand's
first literature award bears her name.Her home in Christchurch
is maintained as a museum in her memory.
-------

‘Surfeit of
Lampreys’ by Ngaio MarshFirst published by Penguin Books Surfeit of Lampreys is
now available on Kindle or in a three-books-in-one volume published by Harper.
ISBN-10: 0007328729.ISBN-13:
978-0007328727

The story opens in New
Zealand when young Roberta Grey is befriended by the
Lamprey family, English aristocrats temporarily living in New Zealand.It continues when Roberta, aged twenty and
newly orphaned, arrives in England
to stay with the Lampreys in London.The Lampreys are a large family: Lord and
Lady Charles and their children, Henry, Frieda, twins Stephen and Colin,
Patricia and Michael.They are all
attractive, funny, lively and extravagant.Of the four adult children only Henry, the eldest, realises that they
should alter their lifestyle.

One of the Lampreys' inevitable financial crises is looming and the only hope
of avoiding bankruptcy is for Lord Charles to receive aid from his
disapproving, joyless and tight-fisted older brother, Lord Wutherwood.With a debt-collector sitting in the kitchen,
only the Lampreys would decide that the best way to soften Lord Wutherwood
towards them was to hold a charade to entertain him during his visit.The scheme was not successful and Lord Wutherwood
storms out.He has to wait in the lift
that serves the flat for some time until he is joined by his loathsome wife,
Violet.The lift goes down a few floors
and then up again and when the doors open Lord Wutherwood is dying, stabbed
through the eye by a skewer that had been used in the charade.

Detective Chief
Inspector Roderick Alleyn of Scotland Yard is called in to investigate.Coming from the aristocracy himself, Alleyn
has no problems dealing with the Lamprey family on equal terms.Unwisely they close ranks and refuse to tell
Alleyn all he needs to know.There are
many things Alleyn has to discover.Was
Lord Wutherwood stabbed before his wife joined him and the lift doors closed?Which twin, Colin or Stephen, operated the
lift for their uncle and why are they being so secretive?Did Lady Wutherwood behave so irrationally
before the shock of her husband's death?Alleyn soon discovers that the Lampreys are all charming and amoral, but
are any of them capable of murder to inherit their uncle's wealth?Before Alleyn can answer any of these
questions there is another murder.

In Surfeit of
Lampreys, the murder of Lord Wutherwood is gruesome but the tone of the
book is light and often playful and the solution is revealed in a scene of
theatrical melodrama.Even at the height
of the investigation, Marsh draws humour out of Alleyn's attempts to question the Lampreys' deaf aunt: 'Alleyn
wondered distractedly if there was anywhere at all in the flat where he could
yell in privacy into the ear of this lady.He decided that the best place would be in the disconnected lift with
the doors shut.By a series of inviting
gestures he managed to lure her in.'

Surfeit of Lampreys was published in 1941 but Marsh made
sure the light tone of the book was not marred by setting it just before the Second
World War.The approach of war is only
mentioned fleetingly.A large number of
Ngaio Marsh's crime novels have a love story as a sub-plot and in this book it
follows Roberta Grey's growing love for Henry Lamprey, even though she cannot
believe he could feel anything more than kindness for her.The title Surfeit of Lampreys indicates
the light-hearted, punning spirit of the book.King Henry I was reputed to have died of overeating a 'surfeit of
lampreys,' a small, eel-like fish of which he was too fond.

All of the Roderick Alleyn detective
stories are an enjoyable read but Surfeit of Lampreys is probably the most
humorous.The fun starts on the first
page with a description of Lady Charles' economy measure of dismissing the
servants and buying 'the washing machine that afterwards, on the afternoon
it broke loose from its mooring and so nearly killed Nanny and Patch.'After seventy-five years, Surfeit of
Lampreys is still an enjoyable read to cheer a winter's day.

------

Reviewer: Carol Westron

Carol Westronis a successful short story writer and a
Creative Writing teacher.She is the
moderator for the cosy/historical crime panel, The Deadly Dames.Her crime novels are set both in contemporary
and Victorian times.The Terminal
Velocity of Cats is the first in her Scene of Crimes novels, was published
July 2013

Saturday, 29 March 2014

Marnie Bruce has hyperthymesia: she can remember everything she has
ever seen - except for the night when she was eleven, when she woke up in an
isolated cottage, to find her mother gone.Now, twenty years later, she's come back to Galloway
looking for answers...

I'm already a fan of
Templeton's DI Marjory Fleming, so I expected to enjoy this book, and wasn't
disappointed.It began with a mysterious
'flashback' opening, then moved into character introductions: Marnie herself,
her former best friend Gemma and her cushioned middle-class family, a husband
and wife parted by a murdered child, forty years ago, Marnie's mother's best
friend Anita, and the mysterious Drax in his night-club.Already my brain was busy trying to work out
the connections between them all.Among
them were updates with the police characters, particularly Big Marge herself
and her Burns-quoting sidekick MacNee.Fleming is an attractive everywoman character, determined and driven in
her police world, while also juggling the roles of daughter, wife and mother in
her farm home.In this book her learned
wisdom is contrasted with the idealistic young Hepburn.Templeton's descriptions of character and use
of dialogue bring you straight into a world of people you can believe in.There are lovely descriptions of place too -
the sea-washed Galloway coast, and the rural
interior where Big Marge lives.The
well-focused plot moved along briskly, with fair clueing, a number of
unexpected twists, and a satisfying solution.The on-going plots with the police characters' families add interest and
depth without taking over.This is DI
Fleming's eighth outing, but it can easily be read as a stand-alone.

A classic police thriller
with a dark, modern twist.Highly
recommended.

-----

Reviewer: Marsali
Taylor

Aline
Templetongrew up in the fishing village of Anstruther,
on the east coast of Scotland
not far from St Andrews. The memories of
beautiful scenery and a close community inspired me to set the Marjory Fleming
series in a place very like that – rural Galloway, in the south-west of Scotland. Aline
read English at Cambridge
University. Alone lives
with her husband Ian in Edinburgh
in a house with a balcony built by an astronomer to observe the stars, with a
splendid view of the castle and the beautiful city skyline.

http://www.alinetempleton.co.uk

Marsali Taylor grew
up near Edinburgh,
and came to Shetland as a newly-qualified teacher. She is currently a part-time
teacher on Shetland's scenic west side, living with her husband and two
Shetland ponies. Marsali is a qualified STGA tourist-guide who is fascinated by
history, and has published plays in Shetland's distinctive dialect, as well as
a history of women's suffrage in Shetland. She's also a keen sailor who enjoys
exploring in her own 8m yacht, and an active member of her local drama
group.Marsali also does a regular
monthly column for the Mystery People e-zine.

Vernon James, self-made millionaire, is in trouble - when he left his
hotel suite, the amenities included a dead blonde.Legal clerk Terry Flyte is one of the team who
have to try and defend him, ignoring the fact that VJ ruined Terry's Cambridge career twenty
years ago ...

This legal thriller was a
real page-turner from the word go.The
opening tells us what happened in the hotel suite - neatly ended by the reminder
that this is VJ's version.Then Terry
takes over the narration.He's a
likeable guy with a drink problem in his past, a lively, believable family and
his own memories of VJ - including, we discover, having helped give him an
alibi for the murder of the father VJ hated.The details of how a legal case is put together, and the interplay
between client, barrister, junior and clerk was interesting, and, as Stone has
worked as a legal clerk, convincing - it's gone on my 'background research'
shelf. There were vivid descriptions of the London police stations and courthouses.Underpinning all this is a fast-moving,
twisty plot where Terry is constantly being drawn into trouble, and can never
tell who to trust.The final quarter of
the book is a tense courtroom scene, and here again it's fascinating looking at
judge, witnesses and jury from the lawyer's point of view.

Nick Stone was born
in CambridgeOctober 31, 1966,
the son of a Scottish father and a Haitian mother. Education
University of Cambridge. His first novel, Mr Clarinet, won the CWA Ian Fleming
Steel Dagger, the International Thriller Writers Award for Best First Novel and
the Macavity Award for Best First Novel, and was nominated for The Barry Award
for Best British Novel.

Marsali Taylor grew
up near Edinburgh,
and came to Shetland as a newly-qualified teacher. She is currently a part-time
teacher on Shetland's scenic west side, living with her husband and two
Shetland ponies. Marsali is a qualified STGA tourist-guide who is fascinated by
history, and has published plays in Shetland's distinctive dialect, as well as
a history of women's suffrage in Shetland. She's also a keen sailor who enjoys
exploring in her own 8m yacht, and an active member of her local drama
group.Marsali also does a regular
monthly column for the Mystery People e-zine.

Published by Thomas and Mercer, 7 January
2014. ISBN: 978-1-4778-4972-9

Londoner Emily Castles makes her
living by doing temporary office jobs but she also helps out at weekend
conferences, usually summoned to assist the organisers by her neighbour, Dr.
Muriel Crowther, a philosophy professor with a penchant for unusual and
eccentric activities. Dr. Muriel has great faith in Emily as an organiser and
detective and when a popular psychic, who styles herself Perspicacious Peg,
predicts that there is going to be a violent death at the Belief and Beyond
Conference in Torquay, Dr Muriel persuades the organisers of the event to
employ Emily to write about the premonition and its outcome.

Everybody expects the
intended victim to be Edmund Zenon, a famous magician and outspoken disbeliever
of psychic phenomena. As well as performing a 'walking on water' trick, which
is regarded by many as blasphemous, especially as he intends to do it at
Easter, Edmund has offered a challenge that he will give £50,000 to anybody who
can convince him that the paranormal exists. Torquay is full of people who are
determined to win the money, both charlatans and genuine believers, and the
town is full of suspects when violence strikes.

The Emily Castle Mysteries
are lively detection stories, filled with eccentric characters and a
tongue-in-cheek view of weekend conferences and social networking. Beyond
Belief is very amusing but, at the same time, several of the characters engage
the reader's sympathy, especially Sarah and Tim Taylor, still trying to come to
terms with the death of their teenage son and turning to a medium for help.

It is easy to pick the
Emily Castle Mysteries at any point and I would recommend Beyond Belief as a very enjoyable read.

------

Reviewer: Carol
Westron

Helen Smith is a member of the Writers' Guild of Great Britain,
the Mystery Writers of America, the Crime Writers' Association and English PEN.
She travelled the world when her daughter was small, doing all sorts of strange
jobs to support them both--from cleaning motels to working as a magician's
assistant - before returning to live in London
where she wrote her first novel. Her work has been praised in The Times, the
Guardian, The Independent, Time Out and the Times Literary Supplement. Her
books have reached number one in the bestseller lists in the Kindle store on
both sides of the Atlantic.

http://www.emperorsclothes.co.uk.

Carol Westron is a successful short story writer and a Creative Writing
teacher.She is the moderator for the
cosy/historical crime panel, The Deadly Dames.Her crime novels are set both in contemporary and Victorian times.The Terminal Velocity of Cats is the
first in her Scene of Crimes novels, published July 2013

Friday, 28 March 2014

Berlin, 1938.Disillusioned by his experience of fighting against the Fascists in Spain, Conrad de Lacey has come to Berlin to write his
novel.However a meeting with his cousin
Joachim sparks off events which will leave him caught between his pacifist
beliefs and taking a dangerous step to avert war.

Set in the cradle of World
War II, this novel beautifully evokes the atmosphere of fear and duplicity under
SS rule.The reader can believe in
idealistic Conrad and his changes of feeling as he learns more about those
around him: Veronica, his ex-wife, who feels Hitler’s spell; half-Jewish
Annelise who is desperate to save her father; Theo, the idealistic friend of
his student days, who now works for the Abwehr.The streets, gardens and canals of Berlin are a real presence in the book, and
the reader’s own historical knowledge ratchets up the tension.The novel is given depth by the debate within
Conrad: is it right to betray an individual country for the greater goal of
international peace?What is a
traitor?The final section of the book
is hard to put down.

A tense thriller, with vivid
historical atmosphere.

------

Reviewer: Marsali
Taylor

Michael Ridpath
was born in Devon in 1961, but brought up in Yorkshire.
He was educated at Millfield, Merton College, Oxford.
Before becoming a writer, Michael Ridpath used to work in the City of London as a bond
trader. He has written eight thrillers set in the worlds of business and
finance, but is now trying his hand at something slightly different. Where
The Shadows Lie, the first in the Fire and Ice series featuring an
Icelandic detective named Magnus Jonson, was published in 2010. He has
published two further books in the series. He now lives in North
London.

Marsali Taylor grew
up near Edinburgh,
and came to Shetland as a newly-qualified teacher. She is currently a part-time
teacher on Shetland's scenic west side, living with her husband and two
Shetland ponies. Marsali is a qualified STGA tourist-guide who is fascinated by
history, and has published plays in Shetland's distinctive dialect, as well as
a history of women's suffrage in Shetland. She's also a keen sailor who enjoys
exploring in her own 8m yacht, and an active member of her local drama
group.Marsali also does a regular
monthly column for the Mystery People e-zine.

Published by Robert Hale Ltd, 31 October
2013. ISBN: 978-0-7198-1168-5

Having been
despatched from the police force by virtue of their advanced age, all the old
crowd from ‘Heartbeat’ have reassembled at Maddleskirk Abbey where a private
police force guards the monks, together with their extensive complex of
properties including a private school, two hospitals, a cinema, theatre, sports
centre, fire station, two libraries and a swimming pool, not to mention the
Abbey itself.

Constable Nicholas Rhea from Aidensfield (Nick Rowan
in the TV series ‘Heartbeat’), with the help of Ex-Sergeant Oscar Blaketon and
ex-PC Alf Ventress, has helped set up a private police force headed by Prior
Tuck so, with the territory being to all intents a small town, and one
populated by monks, the officers are known as ‘monkstables’.

When a body is found in the abbey’s
crypt, Nick is called to investigate. Having himself inherited a piece of land
adjacent to the abbey, he has a vested interest in what is going on. As the
investigation progresses, another problem arises when a boy in the college goes
missing and when the true identity of the boy is revealed, the case takes a
more serious turn.

Told in the first person by Nick, this is like one of
those old-fashioned mysteries from the 1950’s and, while nowhere near as pacy
as modern crime stories, it has an ambient charm and one gets sucked into the
story although the idea of all these characters coming together in this setting
is rather contrived. Even Claude Greengrass turns up. However, all the loose
ends are neatly tied up and explained at the end and I can see this developing
into another series.

------

Reviewer: Ron Ellis

Nicolas Rhea is
only one of the six pseudonyms under which Peter Walker has written around 130
books in the last 40 years. He was born the son of an insurance agent and a
teacher in 1936 in the North York Moors village of Glaisdale.
The oldest of three children, he won a scholarship to Whitby Grammar School
but left at 16 to become a police cadet. In 1956, he joined the North Yorkshire
force as a beat bobby in Whitby.
He also began to write seriously after years of casual interest, having his
first short story published in the Police Review.

Three years later he moved to the
region's Police Headquarters at Northallerton before being posted to
Oswaldkirk, about 20 miles north of York,
as the village bobby in 1964. He then became an instructor at the police
training school in 1967, the same year as his first novel, Carnaby and
the Hijackers, was published. He was promoted to sergeant in 1968 and
inspector in 1976, when he was also appointed Press and Public Relations
Officer. He retired in 1982 after 30 years' service to concentrate on his
writing, encouraged by an interest in his Constable books from
Yorkshire Television. Nicholas Rhea still writes full-time. He lives with his
wife in a quiet North Yorkshire village.

http://www.nicholasrhea.co.uk

Ron Ellis. Writer,
Broadcaster and Photographer, Ron is the author of the popular series of crime
novels set on Merseyside featuring Liverpool
radio D.J./Private Eye, Johnny Ace. He also writes the D.C.I. Glass mystery series. As well as his fiction titles,
Ron has written 'Southport Faces' a social history of the town seen through the
eyes of 48 of its best-known residents. His 'Journal of a Coffin Dodger', the
hilarious adventures of an 84 year old playboy, has been serialised on BBC
Radio and poems from his collection of poetry, 'Last of the Lake Poets', have
won several nationwide competitions. During the 1980's, he conducted over 192 interviews with friends and relatives
of John Lennon for Albert Goldman's biography, 'The Lives of John Lennon'. Ron writes the football reports for the Southport Champion and is also their
theatre and arts reviewer as well as being a regular contributor to magazines
such as Lancashire Life. He runs his own publishing company, Nirvana Books.

Thursday, 27 March 2014

Jim Nisbet is a US crime writer hardly known in the United Kingdom, writing novels set in the
counterculture of San Francisco
in the noir genre, a genre which goes beyond hard-boiled to a bleak
conclusion with, usually, a beautiful but corrupt femme fatale at the
heart. Not at all my usual scene. However, I am deeply impressed by all four of
these novels. There is nothing like them that I have encountered in past or
present crime fiction.

The author is not only a crime writer but a poet. Some of his prose is
extraordinarily lyrical, elsewhere, particularly in the dialogue, bitingly
witty. The meaning may sometimes be opaque (to say the least) and consequently
extremely challenging to the reader. The plots are baroquely convoluted and the
characters as fantastical as anything in Dickens. The texts are full of
literary references which indicate post-modern tendencies, yet the writing as a
whole, I would suggest, goes beyond post-modernism into a realm of its own.

‘Old and Cold’ by Jim Nisbet

Published by The Overlook Press, 13 June
2013. ISBN: 978-1-59020-915-8

This novel is a tour
de force. The unnamed narrator is a sixty-five-year-old alcoholic vagrant
who tells his story in fifteen chapters each one written as a single paragraph
consisting of his rambling thoughts and recollections in which he carries on a
conversation with a voice in his head whom he addresses as Smart Money and also
performs mental arithmetic acrobatics. So far, so near-schizophrenic, so autistic.
But the narrator is also a hitmanand
from time, while rootling about in litter bins, he collects $5000 in cash or
gun wrapped in newspaper. After he carries out his side of the bargain, without
remorse, he can then consume his reward in the form of one vodka martini after
another - all he can think about. The reader is obviously not meant to like the
character but will have to admire the sheer technical expertise of maintaining
the narrative throughout the whole book.

‘Snitch World by Jim Nisbet

Published by The Overlook Press, 27 June
2013. ISBN: 978-1-60486-681-0

The protagonist Klinger (no
first name), an unsuccessful petty crook is, after a failed smash-and-grab
raid, down-and-out. But then he picks a pocket and this brngs him into contact
with the new San Francisco
world of criminal information technology where all that is needed to carry out
a heist is a couple of taps on a smartphone. His old mates left behind, his new
friends are a computer whiz-kid and the dangerously beautiful Marci. But can
they be trusted? In an ending of tragic irony which demonstrates the writer‘s
command of formal narrative structure, Klinger realises that the smash-and-grab
raid, which he had forgotten about, may well be his undoing.

‘The Spider’s Cave’ by Jim Nisbet

Published by The Overlook Press, 13 June
2013. ISBN: 978-1-59020-198-5

The
Spider’s Cage begins ‘The indigo thatch of stars and space
contained the desert night, the desert night contained a solitary building.
Night and building evolved and moved imperceptibly, one about the other, cool
and smooth like a pillow over a gun.’ The building is in fact a shack in which
lived Edward ‘Sweet Jesus’ O’Ryan, rancher, cowboy, rodeo star, Hollywood
extra, philanthropist and pioneer (and rich) oilman who had a taste for
solitude and abstemiousness. But now O’Ryan is dead and the only creature to
acknowledge his death for some days is a tarantula. Then his granddaughter
country singer Jodie O’Ryan goes missing and her lover, the private detective
Martin Windrow, searches for her through a bizarre social landscape featuring,
among others, a Verlaine-quoting prostitute, an androgynous bodyguard, a
pimp-entrepreneur-singer, a Salvadorean revolutionary, a car salesman hooked on
tranquilizers, a cop who treats the common cold with cocaine cut with
amphetamines. Finally the novel reaches its conclusion in that
tarantula-infested shack in which O’Ryan died.

‘Prelude to a Scream’ by Jim Nisbet

Published by The Overlook Press, 12
September 2013. ISBN: 978-1-59020-199-2

Seven years ago middle-aged
drifter Stanley Ahearn saved the life of a little Chinese girl. Ever since her
father, a prosperous storekeeper, has provided Stanley
with a flat, a job driving a van and enough money to satisfy Stanley’s taste for casual sexual encounters.
But then he meets in a bar an alluring green-eyed woman who calls herself
Vivienne. Three days later he wakes up in hospital missing a kidney.
Unfortunately his other kidney is diseased; without a replacement he could die.
With a new kidney his chances would be immeasurably increased, but, also
unfortunately, he has no medical insurance and so is cursorily discharged. He
has already discovered, thanks to Detective Corrigan who interviewed him in
hospital, that he is not the only victim of organ robbery; he has several
predecessors. The only way to get the new kidney he needs so desperately is to
track down the perpetrators of the robbery beginning with the mysterious
Vivienne. He is aided in this by Iris, the nurse who tended him in hospital,
but he should also have trusted Corrigan. As it is, the novel ends with Stanley in a far worse
place then he was before - very much the victim. But there are humorous
passages, as in the other novels, which lighten the tone. I particularly liked
the scene in hospital when Stanley
is coming round and is dimly aware that Iris and the surgeon are arguing about
the merits or not of ‘socialised’ medicine. But when the surgeon realises that Stanley is uninsured he
can’t wait to get him out of hospital, hence the subsequent plot developments.
In another amusing scene Stanley and Iris are treated to a lecture by a
taxi-driver on environmental issues.

These are bold and adventurous novels, recommended for readers who like
a challenge.

------

Reviewer: Radmila May

Jim Nisbethas published eleven novels, including the
acclaimed Lethal Injection. He has also published five volumes of
poetry. His novel, Dark Companion, was shorted-listed for the 2006
Hammett Prize. Various of his works have been translated into French, German,
Japanese, Italian, Polish, Hungarian, Greek, Russian and Romanian. 2010
could be named “The Year of Jim Nisbet” as, in addition to the PM/Green Arcade
publication of A Moment of Doubt, Jim has a new hardcover, Windward
Passage (winner of the San Francisco Book Festival 2010 Award for Best
Science Fiction) from Overlook Press, along with two reprints, kicking off
Overlook's reissue of Jim's entire backlist, beginning with the long out of
print Lethal Injection, and, to finish off an amazing four-novel year,
The Damned Don't Die. Aside from reading and performing his own
work for some forty-five years, Nisbet has written and seen produced a modest
handful of one-act plays and monologues, including Valentine, Note
from Earth, WonderEndz™ SmackVision™ and Alas, Poor
Yorick, and himself directed the original productions of most of these
works.
Nisbet also owns and operates his own business, specializing in but not limited
to the design and construction of its eponymous Electronics Furniture.

Sunday, 23 March 2014

Published by Bourbon St. Books, February 18, 2014. ISBN:
978-0-06-219538-8Translated from the Hebrew by Steven Cohen

There's an old saying:
"Those who can, do; those who can't, teach." It is a fitting almost
reverse description of the author of this debut novel. He is a literary
scholar and editor of international fiction and crime literature at Keter Books
in Israel,
specializing in the history of detective literature. So he is something
of an anomaly. He has created a new protagonist, Israeli detective
Avraham("Avi") Avraham, an introspective character who, while being a
policeman, is unsure of himself when he is away from his duties.

In this case, he is confronted by the mother of a 16-year-old boy who is said
to have left home one morning for school and disappearing. As Avi investigates
what should be a simple missing person inquiry, it spirals out of control and
takes over his life, ultimately becoming
complicated by a neighbor who inserts himself into the investigation with what
may be false information.

Aside from the fact that the novel is set in Israel, where crime is a rarity, it
could just as easily be a tale told elsewhere. Avi is a memorable
protagonist, and the plot is well thought out. He is bruited about as the
preeminent Israeli detective of the 21st Century. The translation is smooth,
and the twist at the end is so unexpected that it is worthy of a more seasoned
novelist. And we look forward to the sequel, A Possibility of Violence, due out from Harper this summer.
Recommended.
------Reviewer: Ted Feit

D. A. Mishani (born
in 1975) is an Israeli crime writer, editor and literary scholar, specializing
in the history of detective fiction. His crime series, featuring police
inspector Avraham Avraham, was first published in Hebrew in 2011 and is
translated to more than 15 languages. The first novel in the series, "The
Missing File", was shortlisted in 2013 to the CWA International dagger
award. D. A. Mishani lives with his wife and two children in Tel Aviv.

Ted and Gloria Feit
live in Long Beach, NY, a few miles outside New York City. For 26 years,
Gloria was the manager of a medium-sized litigation firm in lower Manhattan. Her husband,
Ted, is an attorney and former stock analyst, publicist and writer/editor for,
over the years, several daily, weekly and monthly publications. Having
always been avid mystery readers, and since they're now retired, they're able
to indulge that passion. Their reviews appear online as well as in three
print publications in the UK
and US. On a more personal note: both having been widowed, Gloria and Ted
have five children and nine grandchildren between them.

Having recently read an article
bemoaning the lack of French novels that successfully make it through the
language barrier (and - incidentally - wondering about the plethora of English
language books that do succeed internationally) I was interested to read The Stone Boy, a translated French
mystery.

Elsa Preau is a lonely
woman. A former headmistress, whose employment ended in unfortunate
circumstances, she is estranged from her husband, enduring a strained
relationship with her son and a practically non-existent one with his wife and
son. She spends her time observing the comings and goings in the neighbourhood.
Her interest is piqued when she notices a local family with three children,
only two of whom are enrolled in school. Imagining all kinds of abusive family
dynamics, she is determined to get to the bottom of the situation.

As the reader learns more
about Elsa's mental state, and history, the truth becomes ever more precarious
and her motives questionable. Distraught that no one - not her son, the police
or social services - will listen to her, Elsa takes matters into her own hands,
with devastating consequences.

A beautiful narrative,
and stylistically fascinating, the author utilises dialogue, monologue and
correspondence to move the denouement along. I had breezed through the first
third of the tale without even realising it. The extensive scene setting races
through several decades - from 1946 to 2009, when the mystery appears to the
reader for the first time.

Poignant, moving and
tragic in many ways, abuse and mental illness dominate the denouement and leave
a sad, empty space in the reader's heart at the conclusion.

------

Reviewer: Joanna Leigh

Sophie
Loubierewas born 10 December 1966. She is the author of five
novels including The Stone Boy, for
which she won several awards, including the French Prix Lion Noir for crime
writing in 2011.

Joanna Leigh studied French and German at university. She works in
the aerospace industry and is a chartered marketer in the UK. She describes herself as a
voracious reader, enjoying genres as varied as crime thrillers, historical
fiction and autobiographies. Joanna lives in London. She is the daughter of crime thriller
writer Leigh Russell.

About Me

From an early age I have been a lover of crime fiction. Discovering like minded people at my first crime conference at St Hilda’s Oxford in 1997, I was delighted when asked to join a new group for the promotion of female crime writers. In 1998 I took over the running of the group, which I did for the next thirteen years.
During that time I organised countless events promoting crime writers and in particular new writers. But apart from the sheer joy of reading, ‘I actually love books, not just the writing, the plot or the characters, but the sheer joy of holding a book has never abated for me. The greatest gift of my life has been the ability to read'.